be good

I love leisure! I think that I am pretty good at enjoying myself but this past month has tested me and pushed my fun limits. We spent some time with Taylor family on the beach and golf course in Cape Cod, spent a weekend in New Hope, Pennsylvania for a tubing adventure, hosted one of the smoothest Land Parties ever, enjoyed Coney Island for a ballgame and rollercoasters, spent a week with 10 friends at a villa in Playa Del Carmen, Mexico and attended a beautiful wedding in West Glacier, Montana!

I feel incredibly fortunate to maintain a lifestyle conducive to these activities and to have such amazing friends and family to share them with.

Summer always arrives hot and heavy. My work schedule declines (to 3 1/2 days a week) but my social schedule explodes to the point where I have even less free time! This summer’s weekends are booked solid with great adventures and the next two months are bursting with potential goodness…

June 11 brought a great start to Summer ’12 with the arrival of my nephew, Lincoln Eustace Taylor! Andrew and Rachel instantly became amazing parents dedicated to offering their child the best life he could dream of… Lincoln was born into battle; within 24 hours was having an MRI and he is scheduled for brain surgery in his first month. It has been a difficult emotional journey for everyone, but I feel good about him and believe that this experience will make us all stronger. This is how a great hero is made!

And in the midst of this chaos, Andrew has built his first restaurant! Eventide Oyster Co. in Portland, Maine opens tomorrow and is poised to become a beautiful and amazing addition to the already wonderful dining scene there. Alaina and I are headed north tomorrow for the grand delicious unveiling…

Last weekend was another birth, of sorts, as Alaina’s latest stage-managed production completed a workshop run of “Here Lies Love”, a new musical by David Byrne and Fatboy Slim, at Mass MoCA. I was in North Adams, MA for three days and got to enjoy some beautiful hikes in the region (including a couple of backcountry ski trails on Mt. Greylock that I hope to return to in powdery delight) and experienced the show for the first time. It is a truly amazing piece of theater about former Filipino First Lady Imelda Marcos. The Audience stands in a central pit while the action takes place on four-foot tall moving platforms swirling around them. The music throbs, the lights blare, the projections flash and the actors dance with a personally riveting and morally ambiguous story that makes for great entertainment.

I welcome the end of Winter because Summer is sweet, but I always feel a tinge of remorse to see the snow melt away and know that I won’t be back on skis for another eight months. The season typically ends with some Spring slush runs and over the last 10 days I have experienced this transition at Stowe, where we were skiing over huge dirt patches in 70 degree sunshine in the brightest ski attire we could find, and in Whitefish, Montana, where I went to visit my college roommate, Marty and his family.

The first day actually had mid-winter conditions and we hiked into the Canyon for some delicious powder and had a day of hoots and hollers stomping through 3000 acres of stashes at Big Mountain. The temperature was close to freezing and as a snow junkie, that is a crucial threshold… The next day, Spring arrived and dashed our dreams of pioneer powder: we rode snowmobiles deep into the wilderness and established a road to the top of a steep pitch covered with perfectly spaced trees. One snowmobile towed three skiers up to the top and then turned around to head down and pick us up at the bottom. The sun can be the ultimate outdoor pleasure, but on this day it turned our pristine powder into thick cement and robbed us of a last dance with winter’s bounty. We turned to our snowmobiles for some alpine exploration, but even that proved a challenge in the mashed potatoes, getting stuck and digging out repeatedly. It was my first experience on a snowmobile and I had some epiphanies about these machines:

1.) It felt like what I imagine riding a Speeder Bike from “Return of the Jedi”/Mariokart would feel like.
2.) It is incredibly fast and powerful.
3.) It doesn’t always turn when you want it to.
4.) It requires a full body strength to maneuver.
5.) It allows quick access to terrain that is unattainable with any other mode of transport in any other season.
6.) It is very fun to ride.

Tuesday was my official farewell to the ski season and while most of the mountain hadn’t softened up enough from the overnight freeze to make one last aggressive day, the groomers did provide some high speed bombing and I went out in a blaze of gravity. It was a quick vacation and smooth transition into Spring in one of the most beautiful settings this country has to offer. I feel lucky that I will have the opportunity to return there this summer for Marty and Sandy’s wedding and to enjoy the sun and warmth in all its glory, with Winter skiing just a memory or a dream.

President’s Day was a vacation, which meant a trip to Vacationland. I drove the 6 hours to Portland on Saturday and spent the long weekend in the company of amazing family. We dined the finest as Chefbro Andrew created some dazzling masterpieces at Hugo’s, we played hard on the Reiche’s Paddle Tennis court and enjoyed the company of parents and siblings and united families. I am always amazed by all of my relatives and lucky to be a part of their lives.

On Monday, in celebration of Washington’s Birthday, I drove up to Rangeley, ME to check out Saddleback Mountain. In perusing the internet, I found a trail map of said resort and knew I had to investigate. The entire top of the Mountain — with an elevation over 4000 feet — is covered in steep runs and beautiful glades. It is laid-back and uncrowded, which makes it pretty much my dream mountain, and despite the fact that everyone is cursing this season’s dearth of snow, the conditions were astonishingly good and iceless. This mountain kicks ass!

I brought my laptop to India. I debated it for months, and decided to lug it for a few reasons: the most practical was as a storage device for all my videos. I had two 4 GB cards that were obviously insufficient video time, so I needed to fill and dump them. While unnecessary, the ability to record music and blog is a treasured joy and the weight and space sacrifice in my tiny backpack seemed inconsequential. Travel tends to throw some tricks at you and after 6 days, the power adapter was fried by a generator on our houseboat and although the computer itself was thankfully spared, it was rendered useless. When we made it to Delhi 8 days later, I tuk tukked it to the Apple Store in search of a new cable, and they told me that they were all out of the MacBook adapters. They allowed me to charge the computer in the store for a while, which gave me just enough juice to download my videos through the end of the trip and I was able to thumb some blogposts on my iPhone, but unfortunately, my music production was halted. I am looking at it as a gentle reminder that visual and aural India is too valuable to be spent on a small box with earphones.

But in the few hours that I did have an operational studio, I did produce some music that I enjoy listening to. Enjoy!

Back in Brooklyn now after an unplanned two-day drive from Chicago following an Irene-inspired flight diversion from Delhi, I have had almost 24 hours to catch my breath and reflect on the crazy month that I just experienced. It was fantastic, intense, challenging, beautiful, terrifying, inspiring, depressing, insane, hilarious, exhausting and amazing trip. The few words that I write here can barely do justice to the feelings touching me throughout the adventure. India is maximum sensory overload at all times and it goes straight to the brain.

We ended in Delhi, with two days at the uber-luxurious Imperial Hotel as a treat and reward for surviving the punishing travel demands of Indian travel. Little did we know we were so far from home. We arrived on an overnight train at 5am but couldn’t check into our comfy bed until 11, so wandered around the bizzarely empty center of India’s capital for 6 hours in a dream state before some pool time, some food and a trip to a local Sufi shrine, which quickly became the most overwhelming of all my experiences during the adventure. Unaware, we had wandered into the final Thursday evening prayer session of Ramadan and were crushed with worshippers. I have never experienced anything like this intense density of people and all I could think about was stampede deaths which is why I feel lucky to have only lost my wallet…

The next day was a street food safari in Old Delhi, which was as densely packed as our previous excursion but also involved the same density of motor vehicles, followed by some shopping at Main Bazar and an elegantly delicious dinner at Bukhara. We awoke at 5am the next day to catch a train to Agra for a final day at The Taj Mahal, the most ornate and precious building in the world. On our train back to Delhi, we learned that all NYC airports were pre-empitvely closed for the hurricane and our flight had been canceled. Some quick research opened the possibility of not returning until September 6; panic ensues and we eventually make our way to the airport, where we are offered the possibility of flying to Chicago, renting a car and driving home via Pittsburgh, finally arriving home 36 hours behind schedule. It was a grueling five days since the Buddhist tranquility of Dharamsala, but we arrived home and hugged our cats then fulfilled our sushi cravings and passed out.

I want to go back to India and see more. It has so much to offer and we only scratched the surface, but for the next few months, I will be content with life at home. There is comfort in a regular schedule and familiar environs. The point of travel is to escape that, but if I were always on the move, there would be no standard for comparison.

I want to thank my intrepid partners on this journey, Sarah, Eric and Alaina for supporting me and providing great insights and discussion throughout the trip. I know I can be a tough companion sometimes because I love punishment, finding difficult and uncomfortable situations to immerse myself in while seeking out the cheapest food and accommodation possible. Overall, I think we worked well as a team, executing the travel perfectly and learning a lot about India, its amazing people, food and culture, plus ourselves and our own home. I am certain there are many more journeys in our future!

The Himalayas have an aura untouched by any other range, partly because they contain the highest peaks on Earth and partly because they contain such a diversity of cultures. I would love to someday travel across these mountains, from the India to China, and witness the gradual cultural evolution. On this trip we made it only into the foothills, to Dharamsala, but the shift was evident.

Tibet sounds like one of the most beautiful and fascinating places on the planet, but unfortunately suffers under one of the most brutally repressive governments in existence. China invaded Tibet over 50 years ago and has sought to systematically destroy all independent political, religious and historical evidence of this society. Millions have died in this persecution and, to preserve their identity, many have fled to this region of India. The spiritual leader of the Buddhist people, The Dalai Lama, currently resides in the small town of McLeod Ganj in Himachal Pradesh and this has spawned a Tibetan expat community that dominates the area, giving it a very different feel from anywhere else we visited. Momos and noodles filled the menus and we took a cooking class to learn the inspiringly simple method of this regional cuisine. The class was led by a man named Sangye, who showed us the basics and let us prepare our own dumplings and noodle soups. It was delicious and fun, but the real pleasure was meeting this man and hearing his story. He escaped from Tibet 13 years ago by trekking over snowcapped peaks and wading through frigid rivers with a group of refugees, first to Nepal and eventually to India. He came with nothing, begging for food along the journey, and has since built himself a nice business where he can share his love of food and culture with foreigners, an opportunity he sadly could never have in his homeland. We met another refugee who had been imprisoned for three years because he was a monk who refused to denounce The Dalai Lama. His stories from prison were painfully shocking and confirmed that China is a persistent human rights abuser; it is terrifying to think that such an enormous population lives under this tyrannical shroud. All of the Tibetans living in McLeod Ganj had endured life-threatening escapes for freedom and it was a humbling and inspiring experience to consider what is truly important in life and to appreciate how fortunate we are to be citizens of a country that may be fraught with problems, but respects individual and human rights as a foundation for a free society.

Chaos abounds! In every way, Indian cities are collages of clashing elements. It seems that everyone is a merchant, whether they sell from a storefront or a nomadic basket and lawlessness engulfs all aspects of life. Traffic lacks order and food is entirely unregulated, leading to questionable choices in nearly every moment of day-to-day existence. This is, of course, much of what I love about this country; it is raw and real, daring you to test the limits and taxing your comfort constantly.

And then there is Chandigarh. The capital of both Punjab and Haryana states, it is the only planned city in India and quite an anomaly from the typical insanity. Designed by French architect and urban planner Le Corbusier, it features a grid of numbered sectors divided by paved and perpendicular streets where red lights are respected and drivers would not even consider dodging head-on traffic. The city is located in India’s agricultural heartland and features some of the finest food we sampled on our trip. With plenty of legitimate (not novelty) multi-cuisine options, we chose an Italian restaurant to satisfy our cravings for un-Indian and were molto impressato! Our second night there, we ventured to Khyber for some North Indian Frontier food that was heavy on kebabs and absolutely delicious, followed by a trendy bar crawl that could have been set in Manhattan’s Meat Packing district.

The highlight of our time here, though, had to be Nek Chand’s Rock Garden; a beautiful labyrinth of sculpted nature, where every twist and bend in the path revealed walls, water features or figures made of stone or found objects. It is childlike in its imagination and playfulness, created secretly for 15 years by a state road inspector inspired by the abundance of waste produced by the fledgling city. When it was finally discovered, it was recognized as an artistic treasure and sponsored with government assistance. It is a perfect microcosm of the city in its organized chaos with a creative flair. It was a city we never planned on seeing until it fit conveniently into our itinerary but it surprised and delighted us at every turn.

We are traveling in a vast and varied cultural and physical landscape. Planning this trip was frustrating because there were too many places we wanted to visit in too little time, so we decided that we would divide it into two weeks in the South and two in the North with specific locations to be determined. We arranged a flight from Goa to Delhi at the midpoint and then, knowing we would end our trip in Delhi, hopped on a train headed towards the legendary Rishikesh; a small town straddling the Ganges River as it flows out of the mountains. It became internationally recognized when The Beatles dropped in to spend some time with The Maharishi and wrote The White Album. Since then it has drawn spiritual seekers and Yoga devotees to its many ashrams and has become a backpacker haven. The setting is supremely beautiful, with the river coursing through the green foothills of the Himalayas, but we arrived and the rain came down heavily for two days, limiting our exploration. We are here during the monsoon season and we expected to get wet, but up to this point had been very lucky weather-wise, with a particularly dry and occasionally sunny experience. This was our seasonal reminder and the location provided an interesting perspective on the rains: the river rose enormously and flooded many areas around its banks. Houses and temples were engulfed in the ripping current and we watched sadly as cows and goats floated by. I had never seen flooding like this and probably would have been worried had the locals shown any concern, but it is obviously a typical situation and life continues even as property is lost and roads become rivers.

As the rain finally subsided after about 36 hours, we were able to wander around the town and appreciate some of its culture. It is a spiritual Mecca for yogis and promotes some new-age healing and philosophy that we are disconnected from–people inquiring about 40 day intense chakra realignment are aliens to me–but it was fascinating to enter this world as a passing traveler. India often seems strange and foreign to my sensibilities, but Rishikesh seems both stranger and more familiar: it caters to its clientele, which means Western food dominates the menus but alcohol is forbidden. It is spiritual, yet less religious than other parts of the country. It has a tourist feel, but many visitors stay much longer than other places. Basically, it is unlike anywhere else I’ve ever been and is a world unto itself. It is not exactly my scene, but I think it is a mind-blowing sociological demonstration of a self-breeding culture; people come here seeking something and there will always be someone to satisfy that craving, be it plastic jugs to fill with holy river water, intense spiritual cleansing, sitar lessons or a plate of pasta.

India is constantly evolving and one of the best places to get out what you put in. It is for you and from you, both import and export. I see now that I am wrong to think of my journey as a selfish and voyeuristic experience but can accept that it is a cultural exchange–not simply goods and services bought and sold, but dreams and desires revealed and shared.

Our friend Martin grew up in Vermont and attended Middlebury with us but he was always seeking something beyond his New England upbringing and in his post-grad world travels, he found what he was looking for in India. He settled here a few years ago and built a house in Gokarna in the state of Karnataka. We adapted our itinerary to visit him for a few days and confirm that he had indeed found a special little corner of the Earth.

Gokarna is a small town on the Arabian Sea and a sacred site for Hindu pilgrims. There are several temples and a holy spring that provides free and pure water for all. (This is incredibly fortunate because most water in this country is highly contaminated and unsafe to consume, which means we are buying large numbers of plastic water bottles with no recycling available. It is painful to contribute to the already enormous waste problems here and even more painful to watch the locals’ disregard for their own environment by treating the streets as a public garbage disposal, but I am not here to judge anyone, so I view it not as better or worse than the system I know in America, only different…)

The beach at Gokarna is paradise. It extends forever and is completely devoid of any tourist development, filled instead with village kids playing soccer, cricket and fishing. It has the feel of a place that’s remained unchanged for centuries but with India’s tourism and economy booming, it seems unlikely to maintain that authenticity forever. It is a paradox; as much as I love experiencing places like this, I simultaneously feel guilty for inadvertently changing it with tourism gentrification. My imported dollars are supposed to be for the benefit of the community, but they may have an adverse effect, promoting a cultural shift away from the traditional village life towards one that caters to Western tastes.

I admit that my motives for undertaking these world travels are largely selfish and potentially exacerbate old problems while creating new ones, but I also believe that by meeting people and acting as a goodwill ambassador for my own (sometimes antagonistic) country, we can achieve a more harmonious relationship that can lead to greater peace on Earth. I also hope that by sharing my experiences through words, photos, music and video, others might be inspired to venture out and make their own connections around the world, creating a web of relationships that will overcome the selfish political aims of a few rulers.